Weekly Devotional: February 18, 2026

GOD’S WORD
I Peter 4:12-5:13; Philippians 3:10a; II Corinthians 1:7;
Mark 12:29-31; I Corinthians 12:26; John 15:13

Devotional

The Lenten Series for this year will be excerpts from
the late Commissioner Phil Needham’s book:

“Lenten Awakening”
Daily Meditations from Ash Wednesday to Easter

SUFFERING TOGETHER

It may sound strange to say that Christ unites us in suffering. Don’t people come together in groups and communities for enjoyment, security, and personal satisfaction? Painful things may happen in such bodies, but those occasions were not part of the group’s intention. They are usually problems that need to be worked through. The same is true for the church. If a congregation does not address the internal problems that engender disunity and polarization, the Body of Christ will be crippled.

Today we are looking at something quite different. The Apostle Paul speaks of his desire “to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings." - (Philippians 3:10a, NIV). He adds to this: “becoming like [Christ] in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead” (v. 10b-11). What is this “fellowship of sharing in Christ’s sufferings”?

To answer this, we must know what Jesus’ sufferings were. They did not begin on the cross. He was misunderstood, maligned, and mistreated during his whole three-year ministry. Like an Old Testament prophet, he paid the price of his prophetic integrity. His blistering critique of the religious establishment and the wealthy’s exploitation of the poor, his seeming threat to the Roman social order, and the unsettling messianic claims all merged to profile him as dangerous-a considerable inconvenience to be done away with. The cross itself was not the beginning of the suffering; it was the elevation of it to redemptive proportions, for which the trials of his three-year mission had prepared him.

This fact is important to recognize because if we focus only on Jesus’ redemptive suffering on the cross while ignoring the suffering of those three years, we miss some of the important lessons of his life. Jesus showed us that being his disciples would inevitably bring suffering in a world threatened by his radical love. We are tempted, however, to believe that Jesus did all the suffering on the cross and to dismiss any part that suffering has in our own Christian lives: “Jesus paid it all” so we don’t have to pay any price at all. A Christian life of convenience. On the contrary, to be a Christian, a disciple of Jesus, is an assignment to suffering. Not just for some unfortunate members of our congregation, for all of us. Paul tells the Corinthian congregation that they are partners together in both suffering and comfort (II Corinthians 1:7).

This suffering is not just any suffering, caused by accident or our own mistakes or stupidity. It is suffering that comes because we are sincerely seeking to live the life Jesus lived and taught us to live with sufficient credibility to engender some of the same kind of opposition, exclusion, and deprivation suffered by Jesus. Living by our Lord’s command to love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:29-31) comes with the price of personal suffering. The word compassion literally means to “suffer with someone.” Love not willing to suffer is not compassion. Suffering comes with the territory of being a follower of Jesus.

We do not, however, suffer alone. We suffer with other members of the Body of Christ (I Corinthians 12:26) and in that shared suffering is great strength. Christ’s church is a suffering church, comprised of members who continue the suffering of Christ, not because his suffering was not adequate for our salvation—it was—but because his church is called to point to his suffering love by her own suffering for the world’s salvation.

An old Hasidic maxim says: “Our hearts must break before the Word can fall in.” We could add: Our hearts must break before another person can fall into God. Over the years, some Christians have been willing to make the ultimate sacrifice and let their hearts break for someone else with the sacrifice of their own lives. The year of this writing, when the coronavirus was ravaging Italy, a humble village priest named Don Giuseppe Berardelli contracted the virus and because of his vulnerable age was given a respirator that was purchased specifically for him by one of his parishioners. He refused to take it and instead insisted it go to a younger patient who was struggling to breathe, a person the priest did not know. The priest died soon after. (See John 15:13.) But he left a life that pointed undeniably to Jesus.

The church’s suffering is the soil to grow new seedlings for God’s kingdom. A church that attracts with a religion of comfort is a church without kingdom soil. A church united in its suffering for the sake of the world will be fertile ground for the transformation of lives.

PERSONAL PRAYER
Dear suffering Lord, empower me with the grace of giving myself to others, even when I am misunderstood, maligned, or mistreated. Please grant me the grace and courage of a Father Berardelli to put others before myself. Help me to reach out to my brothers and sisters in Christ where I worship and serve, to share their and my suffering, so that Christ can bring us closer together in his love strength. I pray this in your name and for the sake of your kingdom.

Amen.

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OUR CORPORATE PRAYER
Father, we step into Your presence with boldness to let You know that we love You and praise You because You alone are worthy. We lift You as high as our finite minds are able, and we offer You all honor and glory due Your most Holy and awesome name! We believe in You as Father. We believe in You as the only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ. We believe in You as the Holy Spirit and You have given us new life. We believe in the crucifixion, that You conquered death as You rose from the dead! You went back home but You promised in Your Word that You will return and we who believe in You will gather together in the sky because we believe. And it is in that belief that we make this prayer, amen.